The Dry Diver Drownings (2024) by A. Carver

I noticed in the late 2000s the signs of a coming renaissance and blogged about in 2014, right before it kicked-off the next year, but expected the internet market place to simply provide a comfortably stocked niche over the next decade – not stacks of Anthony Berkeley and Christianna Brand in brick and mortar stores. There other developments, twists and turns on the road of the reprint renaissance I didn't anticipate. I never expected a reprint renaissance would directly lead into a translation wave and a locked room revival. Never expected a locked room revival to spawn not one, but two, distinctly different strains of impossible crime fiction.

Firstly, there's a traditionalist, often traditionally-published group of revivalists, like J.L. Blackhurst, Tom Mead, Gigi Pandian and J.S. Savage, coming out of the reprint renaissance. The second strain emerged as an independent scene, spearheaded by James Scott Byrnside, who have been influenced in various degrees by the translation wave. They can get very experimental (H.M. Faust's Gospel of V, 2023), a bit weird (K.O. Enigma's Bunraku Noir, 2023) or stray pretty far from the beaten path (A.Z. Ruin's And Then There Were Nyan, 2024). So never expected a reprint renaissance to branch out, let alone branching out so fast, but have been enjoying it. After all, it's almost like this resurgence is catering to my taste.

That brings us to the presumably pseudonymous "A. Carver" whose love for locked room mysteries and impossible crimes overwhelmed even me.

Carver debuted with The Author is Dead (2022) and introduced the reader to the two series-characters, Alex Corby and her great-aunt Cornelia Crow, who ended up at the mansion of a well-known author on the Scottish coast – where a murderer created so-called taped-shut rooms. No less than four impossible crimes in room that were left tape-sealed from the inside. The second novel in the series, The Christmas Miracle Crimes (2023), opted the ante with more than a half a dozen Christmas-themed impossible crimes, locked room murders and other seemingly miraculous incidents appropriate for the season. Carver recently published the third Alex Corby and Cornelia Crow novel, The Dry Diver Drownings (2024), tackling another series of maddening impossibilities. This time, the impossibilities comprise of vanishings from locked, guarded rooms complete with bodycam footage.

The titular Dry Diver is a character from a creepypasta ("...like a scary story, but on the internet") resembling "someone in an old-school diving suit" and "has no head for some reason." Just a creepy neck stump. Locked doors, closed windows and guarded rooms pose no obstacle as Dry Diver has the ability to "pass through walls and the ground like it's swimming through water." The character was created by Matt Silver, of the Silverfish horror web series, but Dry Diver spawned fan-made web series. And the biggest, fan-made spin-off is Reef Evans' The Dry Diver Drownings series.

Now the two rivaling teams joined forced to shoot a crossover episode at an abandoned, Cold War-era government site, called the Pitchwater Building, buried somewhere deep in the woods – fully fenced off on all sides. Only way in, or out, is a secret tunnel. They found it. Silverfish and The DDD, Team Silver and Team Dry, gather and the latter has brought along a guest, Alex Corby. She got invited by Team Dry's writer and Reef's girlfriend, Yva Dysart, who's the young, aspiring mystery writer who appeared The Author is Dead. Yva provided that first novel with plenty of false-solutions and acted as a rival detective in order to impress her "detective idol," Cornelia Crow, but this time, she's a companion detective to Alex. Cornelia was also invited, however, shooting YouTube videos, creepypastas and urban exploring is not a game for elderly, venerable armchair detectives. So stays behind at a bookshop (Pugmire Pages!) while Alex goes with the rest down the tunnel to the Pitchwater Building.

There are nine people, in total, on both teams. Team Dry consists of Reef, Yva, Chase and Alex, while Team Silver has Matt, Bianca, Tara and the brothers Leo and Viggo. There's a little more than a notable rivalry between both teams and certain members as they enter that strange, Cold War-era structure to film their crossover scenes. A building partially sealed off with four floors of mostly locked doors, closed or boarded up windows and soundproof rooms sparsely-furnished with broken office chairs, desks and filing cabinets. A fantastic place to serve as a backdrop for either an outright horror series or a dark, eerie detective story.

By the way, I reviewed D.L. Marshall's 77 North (2023), back in January, in which the morally ambiguous mercenary John Tyler tackles a locked room murder inside a Cold War-era nuclear bunker in the Arctic Circle. I remarked that one of the attractive parts of Marshall's action packed locked room thrillers is Tyler having access to settings off-limits to your "normal," everyday amateur detective, private eye or impossible crime experts – mentioning you'll never find Alex and Cornelia investigating impossible murders on Gruinard Island (see Marshall's Anthrax Island, 2021). Less than a year later, Alex tramping around a place contemporary to the KGB research facility from 77 North where a murderer wanders around who can apparently get to their victims through solid walls and locked doors. Only real difference, of course, is that the Pitchwater Building isn't swarming with arms dealers, mercenaries and spies ("...everyone involved in this case is a teenager"). So more like a mashup of Hake Talbot and The Kindaichi Case Files.

Something is wrong becomes apparent when they enter and come out of the tunnel to discover graffiti ("LEAVE OR DRY") and signs of vandalism. However, the only way in, or out, is the tunnel and only the two team leaders possessed a key to the padlock they placed on the hatch. A relatively innocent mystery compared to what happens next.

One of the members from Team Silver is witnessed entering the typing room to film a scene, Alex and Chase standing by the door, but never emerges. When they go inside, the room is empty except for the bodycam lying on the floor. The footage shows an attack from no less a figure than Dry Diver! This is not the last time someone is impossibly "pulled under" while alone in a room with the only exits under observation or blocked. There's a fire exit in one of the disappearances, but it's a one-way fire exit requiring two people on the inside to unlock/open it.

 

 

The impossible disappearances aren't the only problem facing both teams in the Pitchwater Building. Someone has padlocked the hatch of the secret tunnel from the outside and sabotaged their phones, which they had collected in a toolbox. So now they're effectively trapped inside the building as people continue to disappear, drowned bodies begin to appear in unlikely, hard to explain places and Dry Diver is seen climbing a wall – before crashing down to the ground below. Alex observes another complication as "the interweaving movements" of the various teams "formed a tangled knot" that need to be carefully picked apart.

So, plot-wise, The Dry Diver Drownings is as dense and maze-like as the previous two novels with one important difference: the locked room puzzles aren't really the centerpiece of either the plot or story. Unlike the taped-sealed rooms from The Author is Dead or the Santa Claus-themed impossibilities in The Christmas Miracle Crimes, the inexplicable disappearances in The Dry Diver Drownings are smaller cogs and wheels in the overall plot. So the locked room-tricks, different for each vanishing, proved to be surprisingly straightforward and uncomplicated compared to the locked room trickery in the previous two novels. There's an obvious reason why the impossible crime element took something of a backseat as The Dry Diver Drownings is a character-arc rather than a serious attempt at a modern classic of the impossible crime novel.

Alex and Yva have to unsnarl this complicated tangle of strange drownings, impossible disappearances and a webwork of movements without the help or guidance of their great-aunt and idol, Cornelia – who only appears during the opening and closing chapters. A coming-of-age novel for two young detectives, if you will. Not to be ignored is the fact that the whole plot eventually turns on the question of motive, which is a callback to the first novel introducing Alex as a mystery fan drawn to the why rather than who or how ("you were the whydunnit girl"). The motive behind the happenings at the Pitchwater Building is unusual, "like a cryptid's motive," but worthy enough for a locked room mystery turned whydunit. Even if it strays a little off the beaten track for what appears to be neo-Golden Age detective novel (ROT13: nf vg ehof zber pybfryl gb gur navzr/znatn zlfgrevrf guna gur bgure gjb abiryf). The Dry Diver Drownings might also stake claim to one of the clearest cases of (SPOILER/ROT13) sberfunqbjvat bs gur zheqrere'f vqragvgl I can recall.

So, if you primarily enjoyed The Author is Dead and The Christmas Miracle Crimes as locked room extravagances with new, creative ways to present and resolve the good, old-school locked room mystery, The Dry Diver Drownings might be a bit of letdown. There's still plenty of inventiveness in how the setup and presentation of the various disappearances. Loved the idea of an internet creepypasta stirring to life to grab people people by swimming or diving through solid walls and locked doors, but, as said before, the locked room-tricks are simpler than in the first two novels. That doesn't take away the book as a whole is still as densely-plotted, traditionally-styled detective novel with plenty of mysteries and puzzles to solve, beside a handful of seemingly impossible disappearances. Perhaps a new direction for the series as Alex made her first step to follow in the footsteps of her great-aunt without her great-aunt helping or holding her hand. I always appreciate the presence of a good rival/companion detective to lend a helping hand with the solution.

In short, I enjoyed The Dry Diver Drownings. Even if it didn't quite measure up to its predecessors as a locked room mystery, but in every other way, the plot is a deliciously tangled mess and, character-wise, an interesting step forward for the main characters/series. If you're new to Carver, Alex and Cornelia, I recommend starting at the beginning of the series as it will help appreciate what Carver is doing in The Dry Diver Drownings. In the mean while, I look forward to what Carver has in store for the fourth entry in the series.